DEAR AMERICA: Petition Circulates to Have College FIRE Husband of Gay Man Who Harassed Ivanka Trump–Would You Sign It?

A person is allowed to have a private life but when that person is thrust onto a national stage, and not for a good reason, they have the possibility to reflect badly on where they work. So maybe the smart thing for the college to do is to let this guy go. Do you think this is appropriate?

A petition is calling for the New York university that employs the urban studies professor whose husband accosted Ivanka Trump on a plane last week to fire the man from his job.

Over 20,000 people have signed a Change.org petition asking Hunter College to remove Matthew Lasner from his position in the administration for his ‘immature and cruel harassment of Ivanka Trump and her family at JFK airport.’

The petition was created by the group Right Wing Millennials.

‘Someone like Mr Lasner, who would harass a mother and her child simply trying to go about their day, does not deserve the honor of teaching,’ reads the petition.

‘The fact that he tried to cover up and change the story around to avoid the consequences of his actions is also a testament to his character. He is NOT a good example for our youth.’

According to his biography on the Hunter College website, Lasner ‘studies the history and theory of the U.S. built environment, with particular focus on housing, and the relationship between housing patterns and urban and suburban form.’

He earned a PhD in architecture, landscape architecture, and urban planning at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, a MS in urban and regional planning studies from the London School of Economics and his BA in urban studies at Columbia.

Lasner and his husband Dan Goldstein were thrown off of a JetBlue flight from New York to San Francisco last Thursday when Goldstein approached the future first daughter and started shouting at her.

While holding a child in his arms Goldstein, 35, asked out loud: ‘Why is she on our flight. She should be flying private.’

Ivanka paid as little attention as possible and tried to occupy her children with some crayons to diffuse the situation until the crew escorted him off the plane.

Lasner said that was not what happened however on Twitter, writing: ‘My husband expressed his displeasure in a calm tone, JetBlue staff overheard, and they kicked us off the plane.’

But just an hour prior to that Lasner wrote on Twitter: ‘Ivanka and Jared at JFK T5, flying commercial. My husband chasing them down to harass them. #banalityofevil’

Lasner has been very vocal about his distaste for Trump on Twitter, writing shortly after the election about marching against the President-elect.

He also posted a video when he marched in Chicago with the hashtags ‘#notmypresident’ and ‘#weslay.’

Should the university fire the professor whose husband accosted Ivanka Trump?*